Finally the public schools. These are conducted by a “school committee,” made up of leading representatives of the firm of God, Mammon & Company. There used to be one professor of Clark University on this board, Frank H. Hankins, an eminent sociologist, and it was his liberal ideas which had a great deal to do with the decision of the Worcester plutocracy to smash Clark. Now Professor Hankins and a dozen of his liberal colleagues are gone, and the “school committee” is filled with semi-illiterates, most of whom could not qualify to teach an elementary class in the schools they control. The Metal Trades Association, with the consent of this “school committee,” sends circulars to the teachers, warning them of the dangers of the closed shop, and of all modern ideas in history, civics and economics. Two or three years ago they encouraged a series of inter-high school debates on the open shop, taking it for granted that their side would win. Of course it didn’t win—it never can where both sides are heard. The secretary of the Black Hand was infuriated, and declared this one more evidence of the prevalence of Bolshevism in the educational world. Nearing and Watson’s “Economics” was first mutilated, and then ousted altogether; the same fate befell the entirely conventional text-book of Professor Thomson, because he stated that immigrants were frequently brought in to get cheaper labor, and were frequently not well treated. The superintendent of schools in Worcester was, until recently, a gentleman by the name of Gruver. He was a good-natured person, who tried to keep friends with everybody; he made the mistake of recommending in a newspaper interview the reading of Wells’ “Outline of History,” and from that time he was doomed. He moved on, and his assistant took his place, a gentleman by the name of Young, a special darling of the Worcester plutocracy, and a special _bete noire_ of the Worcester teachers; a meddlesome, domineering pedagogue, who delights in the exercise of authority, and is never so happy as when he can order some passage blacked out of a text-book, or can storm at some teacher for an unplutocratic utterance. Under the former superintendent a number of teachers studied diligently in summer schools, acquiring special credits; they were promised a hundred dollars increase in salary, as reward for ten years of such labor. Superintendent Young has abolished this reward—and so the teachers are “out of luck.” He has substituted an arrangement whereby high school students are enabled to earn money, to the vast satisfaction of the Worcester plutocracy. The boys and girls lose two weeks of their school work, and in return have the educational experience of acting as clerks in the Worcester department-stores during the holiday rush!